Wigsley, Nottinghamshire – Thankful Village #27

During World War 2 Wigsley was home to an RAF airfield. It was nicknamed the ‘Cemetery of Lights’ due to its terrible luck.

On 11th June 1943, a Lancaster bomber was on a training mission when it’s wing tip clipped a telegraph pole and crashed into number 25 Highfield Avenue in nearby Lincoln. Five civilians died and all but one of the seven crew.

The airfield and control tower are still there. The control tower is forlorn and broken and covered in spray paint. What was the runway is now the main road into Wigsley.

A nearby wind turbine thrums gently and makes me think of propellers. I imagine someone in the tower with binoculars counting the planes out and then counting them back in again.

It’s been more than half a century since the building was in use. I wondered what else it’s walls had seen since then.

A subtitle for these songs might be ‘could I live here?’ It’s usually what I think as I drive away from the villages back to London.

About a year later I found the derelict control tower for sale. I could probably have afforded it at a stretch, though probably not the money to make it habitable.

Could I live there?

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About Thankful Villages

A Thankful Village is a village where every soldier returned alive from World War 1. The term Thankful or Blessed Village was coined by Arthur Mee in his set of guidebooks, The King's England in the 1930s. Darren Hayman is visiting each of the 54 Thankful Villages and making a piece of music and a short film for every one focussing on village life. Some take the form of instrumentals inspired by location, some are interviews with village residents set to music, others are new songs with lyrics or found local traditional songs.

The songs only rarely deal directly with The Great War, Thankful Villages is a random device to choose small locations and explore aspects of community and history. The work is inspired, written and recorded in situ with some post-production added at home in London.